Running Amok with John Bolton by Mike Whitney
www.dissidentvoice.org
March 11, 2006

John
Bolton’s tenure at the United Nations has been relatively unsurprising. He
was shoehorned into his position by presidential edict although the Senate
openly opposed his appointment. Since then, he has lived up to his
reputation as a “loose cannon” by routinely blasting the “alleged” waste
and ineffectiveness of the world body.

Bolton is the new
face of the UN; a blustery huckster whose primary task is to promote the
interests of big business and Israel. He is not a diplomat at all, but an
uber-lobbyist whose mission is to take a wrecking ball to the foundations
of international accord. As chief weapons-inspector, Scott Ritter sagely
noted, “Bolton was sent to destroy the UN.”

From Day 1, Bolton
has worked tirelessly to reinforce corporate America’s stranglehold on the
developing world and to transform the institution into a fiefdom for
western elites. That explains why he has backed a plan to deploy 10,000 UN
peacekeepers to oil-rich Sudan in defiance of the tens of thousands of
Sudanese who oppose the intervention. It is just another ploy to control
the world’s dwindling resources.

Under the banner of
“Reform”, Bolton has affected a number of changes that will forever alter
the composition of the UN and eradicate its last vestiges of legitimacy.

In a year or so the
United Nations will be just another American NGO doing the legwork for the
multinational corporations. That’s good news for Bolton and his friends at
the American Enterprise Institute, the ideological headquarters for
America’s imperial incursions.

By enlisting UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan, Bolton has advanced his agenda for “radical
reform” including “more financial oversight, simplified hiring and
reporting procedures, staff buyouts, and a modern information system.” (Al
Jazeera) He is pushing to privatize more of the workload and outsource as
many of the routine tasks as possible. Ultimately, he intends to staff the
organization with like-minded people from the business and banking
communities who will cater to the needs of their corporate managers. This
will allow agency funds to be diverted to the usual suspects (Halliburton,
Bechtel, Flour etc) while the relentless colonization of the developing
world continues apace.

The New York
Times has played a pivotal role in hyping the reform project. Staff
writer, Warren Hoge, has done most of the heavy lifting (although he was
assisted at one point by NYT icon Judith Miller) carping about the
fictitious “oil for food” scandal and extolling Bolton’s ax-wielding
activities. The Times critique of UN failures reads like an extended
passage from the “Rubaiyat”; great reading, but mostly hot air.

Kofi Annan, however,
agrees with Bolton about the need for change:

“Just as this
building after 50 years of ad hoc repair and maintenance, now needs to be
fully refurbished from top to bottom, so too our organization, after
decades of piecemeal reform, now needs a thorough strategic refit.”

So, what’s the
bottom line?

American plutocrats
and corporate bigwigs are looking for an organization that is more
responsive to their needs. The UN provides the credibility they need as
cover for their “humanitarian interventions” (re: wars of aggression) and
reconstruction projects, (Sluicing money to the major corporate players)
but it requires major revamping to better serve their interests.

Bolton is pushing
for structural changes to the Human Rights Commission so the UN can
chastise the weaker nations for rights violations while exempting the US
from charges of prisoner abuse and war crimes. This all fits into the
broader objective of converting the UN into a rubber stamp for American
foreign policy.

To that end, Bolton
is pushing for a new post of “Chief Operating Officer.” This job will be
filled by a political loyalist who can override the decisions of the
Secretary General and move the organization in a prudent, pro-corporate
direction. Right now, it looks like the job will go to Mark Malloch Brown,
who did a stint with the World Bank; proving he has the proper pedigree
for his next assignment.

It appears that the
job of Secretary General will become a meaningless ceremonial role much
like that of the President of the United States. Undoubtedly, it will be
filled by someone who is capable of expressing great warmth and humanity
while carrying out the imperial mandate.

Does Bill Clinton’s
name come to mind?

Bolton has worked
diligently to remake the UN from the ground up ignoring the criticism of
those who don’t share his vision of a less democratic institution.
Dismissing their ridicule as sour grapes, Bolton said triumphantly, “This
work is too important to be caught up in procedural wrangles in this
body.”